Comeback

Peter Darwin, a young First Secretary in the Foreign Office, returns to England from Tokyo for some quiet leave before taking up a new post. On the way he stops briefly in Miami, and there becomes entangled in a fracas which involves his going back not just to England but to Gloucestershire, scene of the long-buried memories of his childhood. Walking unexpectedly into a veterinary surgeon’s desperate troubles there, he begins to recall events from the past and comes to realise that if he stays around he can perhaps save a good many people from destruction. Trained to penetrate the truths behind façades, he has to use all his diplomatic skills to unravel not political shenanigans but the cruel fates which befall racehorses. The trick, as he progressively discovers, is not to suffer the same deaths. Comeback, which is Dick Francis’s thirtieth novel, is as exhilarating, as gripping and as brilliant as any of his previous bestsellers.